It is most excellent to love and part
For in between the fire of togetherness
And the ice of distance
Lurks love’s yearning
And in that yearning
Lurks life.

The Measure 08.15.10
Every day
Have a happy day
And when I can no longer bring
You hugs of joy on lovers wings
Send me away
For joy is the measure of all things.

Grief & Relief 08.01.10
Obliviously,
When we attend
The dead or dying
Our grief comes with relief
That we are not the dead or dying.

Arms of Now 07.25.10
Tomorrows are the arms of now
The dream-full verses of my brow
When I shall gather you and cry
We live, we love, we die.

 Deny 07.11.10

FATHERLAND 07.04.10
(Inspired by the endless wars that have plagued beautiful Lebanon, causing constant waves of immigration ever since time began. The love of country and the yearning to return are very powerful emotions.) A tribute to independence day, 1776.

I watch the trees undress in autumn sun
Reveal their private branches one by one
Unmindful of my gaze, no blush, nor cry
Embrace the humming wind and mark the sky.

These clouds of misty perfume and the breeze
Bring back your face amidst the naked trees
And tipsy violins and all the sins
Of gushing youth and ah, the memories—
Where mighty, melancholy, mountains, peak
And olive branches meditate and speak
Unto the earth who is so old and noble
And the vine
Invites the birds to gossip on her cheek.

Fatherland, oh, Fatherland
If only I could hold your hand
And stand upon your shore
Behold your hoary mountains dive into the sea and snore
With mystifying grace
Implore the endless waves to wash your ancient face.

Fatherland, before I gray, I shall be back
I shall be back, one misty autumn day
To hug your loving dirt against my chest
And plant a garden on your ruddy breast
Loiter together in the timid afternoon
Until the sun begins to blush before the moon.

Some weary nights I wonder if you sleep
I see the worry on your mountain face
And frowning furrows run so dark and steep
And little soldiers run about the place…
Hoary mountain land repose, un-frown your brow
Forget the little soldiers now
Look back a thousand scores, recount
The many times some little soldiers ran about your mount…
What do the little soldiers know?
So they come and so they go
And you will have their dust and mine
And every year there will be snow.

Fatherland
The footsteps of the Lord stood once upon your sand
And the sea amid a storm stood still
And there are little soldiers under every hill
And the cedar trees upon the mount command:
"Thou shalt not kill"
And quietly pray for peace
In the land of the Lord our Father
In the Fatherland.

Secrets 06.27.10
Nothing mattes that I know
Let secrets whisper winter tales
I am a tear with fingernails
Bitten too short to scratch
Let loving bring my verse to hatch
Only fate can forge a match
Nothing is forever late
I close myself and wait.

Thoughts @ Love o6.20.10
Love between Woman & Man
Is the will of divine intervention
For, how else could one explain
Why our insensate, scattered atoms
In this spreading, indifferent universe
Were gathered from their inert repose
(Having waited four and a half billion years)
Then animated into one man and one woman
Who across this entire spread of humanity
Have sparked love only in one another?
Love is our desperate attempt
To achieve perfection from within
To find that divine animating spirit
Which has gathered our strewn atoms
And forged them into two sentient beings.
We love what we cannot have
What we are incapable of
What we aspire toward
What we cherish & admire
What we can’t have enough of
What we need to perfect our being.
I love you because you have
Attributes I solemnly covet
Because I need more
Of your gentleness
Your kindness
Your patience
Your sincerity
Your justice
Your goodness
Your joyous simplicity
Your acceptance of others
Your sympathetic listening
And your vicarious compassion.
I love you because
You have ignited my soul
With your spark of the divine.

Free Love 06.13.10
(Sonnet#64)
Why must we always gaze upon
Life's wrinkled face, its faltering back,
Its detail-burdened shoulders, stooped,
Its faded garb and worn-out shoes,
Before we eye-to-eye will see?
Oh love, you will not stoop for youth
Or might or reason?  You've your own
Freedoms and truths, your very own
Intolerance of man-made chains,
Your taciturn disrespect of
Conduct rules and social mores;
You're but a bird that owns the sky.
Oh love, pray tell us lovers why
When you're no longer free you die!

When an invasive ideology conquers a defenseless mind
It not only occupies and rules it like a dictator
It also behaves as if it actually owns it
Prohibiting any independent thinking
And censoring all unfavorable ideas.

Intelligence and openmindedness
Are independent of each other;
Often, the hottest minds are closed
While the meekest minds are wide open.

Beware of what you allow into your free, unsuspecting mind
Unlike a marriage, you might not be allowed a divorce
And that union might rule the rest of your life.

Sadness 05.30.10
(A tribute to Memorial Day and all the loves that we have lost.)

Enjoy your sadness
Its joy endures better than happiness
Trust it because it does not betray you
You touch your soul's roots only when you are sad.
Sadness need not be forgiven
It is, itself, the forgiver of all loss
It is an attribute of those who love,
Their suffocation before the life saving gasp.
Sadness is not sadness
It is life lived deeply, underneath the surface of joy.
Bless your sad joy
And bless your joyful sadness
You will have to pry open a thousand oysters
Before you can find your pearl.
When you are happy
Know that your bliss
Comes of your sadness.

Love Again 05.23.10

(We regret when we learn too late.  Errors are our best teachers and regrets, our worst pains.  It’s hard to go forth leaving the best behind.  It’s even harder to go back and find that change has already preceded us.)
(Sonnet#62)
If only I could love but one more time
You, I shall chose to take my soul to bed
And like a couplet, we again would rhyme
And on my heart you would recline your head.
If only I could love and never stop
If lover's eyes could be a bit more wise
If life were not as fleeting as a drop
Of rain that feeds and freshens as it dies.
If only I could love and never die
If change did not subject me to her will
If I could lift you with my wings and fly
If earth were not so bold to hold me still.
Life that I lost, if I could but regain
You’d be the one that I would love again.

You fled like spring but left us greened
Greened without a flower.
Spring used to come to us each year
To un-brown earth with color.
Why could you not each coming year
Spend a bit of April here?

To Mother 05.09.10
Barefoot I’ve walked the wild capricious plights
Of life, alone, with gratitude and zest
Not once I lost my taste for taming heights
My faith, my soul, my kindness, or my quest
For truth, for beauty, and for works sublime
I set my goals and wrestled tides and time
And loved with passion, slept and wept with ease
And rocked my sons to sleep upon my knees
And prayed in verse that God be moved to see
How hard you toiled to bring the best in me.

You gave me roots, as meadows give the trees
And nursed my youth and fruits against the freeze
Against the reckless winds that devastate
You gave me peace to calmly face my fate.
My gifts all come from you: my verse, my mind
My true compassion for the human kind
My sense of justice and my fearless soul
My private bond with God who tends to all.
If all could love like God and mothers do
Life would be warm and beautiful and true.

Mother dear, oh mother dear
The certainties in life are only three
Death and change and all your love for me
Death will come, I do not fear
And change and age are always here
But oh, without your love, what would I be?

A Prisoner Of Your Own 05.02.10
(We live our destinies, which often means that our emotions and we must sleep in separate beds.  We live alone when our sentiments elsewhere graze.  We dilute our lonesomeness with forbidden freedoms borrowed from imagination.  We endure hopelessness with the powers of denial.  We dream and write white poems on the black papyrus of nights.  We try to tame wild feelings but learn too late that they cannot be harnessed. Our best behavior becomes our best pretense.  We muffle our natures in the name of propriety.  Our smiles belie our tears.  We await our savior, coincidence, with suffocating patience.  And when the clouds part, we fall through darkness into light.)

My faithful love, love unconditional
Who has endured my life's unyielding weight
Who, while I strayed, was always rational
And never lost her faith in love or fate.
Where do I place you now that I'm alone
No arms to hold, no lips to sooth my strife
While you remain a prisoner of your own
Pinned underneath the layers of your life.
If you believe some day you will be free
To choose your life and time, your place and mate
So will I live my life till you and me
Can sail together on a breath of fate.
My faithful love, what ever comes to be
You'll always be God’s guiding light to me.

 Only Words Are Free 04.25.10
Before I come to you
Before I pretend that I do not pretend
I need to love you freely
With my words.
Most days
Words are all I have
And all I can have
With you.
But words, my love, endure
Live longer than life
Longer than death
Longer than love
So when I love you with my words
You might reflect and say
He loves me all the way.

Do Not Ask Me Why 04.11.10
Retain your mystery
Tell me not your secrets
I thrive on shades of imagination
And I find the faces of saints in clouds.

Do not ask me if or why I love you
Rather, ask me why I’d love to love you
For you know how frail love tends to be
And how, like tragic life, it comes and goes
But loving-to-love is always there, looming like death
Invisible as the air we breathe yet felt with every breath.

Waste no time finding out
If I have fallen in love with you
What matters is that I’d love to love you
That I’d love my feelings to flame about you
And become a glowing halo all around your face
Like the sun always glows around the dizzy earth
Or the stars always glitter in the sky’s embrace.

Do not ask me why
I’d love to love you like a star
Nor why you pretend that I am near
Nor why I pretend that you are far
Nor why I am afraid of what I am
Nor why you are afraid of what you are.

Wasted Words 04.04.10
I need to escape
The bondage
Of your sentence.
Articles, prepositions
Punctuation marks
Mire me in text.
I would each word
Were a manifesto
A declaration.
Squandering words
Is like sending youth
To battles to be shot.
Give me one word
That says it all
Just say yes or no.
No explanations please
And I will say nothing
But simply nod
Or shake my head.

Readiness 03.14.10
(Sonnet#65)
Readiness, my darling, comes in stages
It brings relief from anguish and delay
And happiness is readiness to oust,
Evict our heartaches and our mad concerns.
One cannot act until ready to act
Nor change nor hold belief nor live nor love
Without the moment's readiness.  But, what
Readies readiness, what makes decisions
Resolute, both wise and foolish, good or
Bad?  Each soul has its own capacity
When fears or passions overflow or when
Anger over-brims or solitude drowns,
Fate overpowers or desires explode,
Or love destroys the prison bars of hate,
Revolts and overruns the social walls.
Then, good or bad, foolish, wise, there will be
Action and readiness moves the world.

Chosen not to Choose 03.07.10
Say it in writing or in verse
Or say it not or even worse
Resist, deny, that you and I
Were simply chosen not to choose
We either heed this sudden love
Or else to fleeting life we lose.
Are you afraid to clap your wings
When eager nature sighs and sings
Lest you should falter, fall, and break
Upon the rocks of your mistake?
Or are you that afraid of pains
Of what has passed, of what remains
Of spring uncertain and of clouds
That shroud without a hint of rain?
Fly to me, my sunny love, oh, fly to me
When we cease to bring us joy we cease to be.
Is there really an again
Without the bitterness of pain?

When A Flower Dies 02.28.10
(To Rianne Hauschild & Samira Chalala)